Funeral Support Payment

Cost of living crisis: find out what help is available

Delivering the Funeral Support Payment is part of a wider set of actions set out in the funeral costs plan by the Scottish Government to reduce funeral poverty and help people manage funeral costs. This benefit provides critical financial support to people at a difficult time. 

Social Security Scotland delivers the Funeral Support Payment supporting eligible individuals in receipt of certain low income benefits with a payment to help in paying for a funeral. The one-off payment is a contribution towards the costs of the funeral. It helps pay for the reasonable burial or cremation fees and some travel costs. 

Background

In March 2016 we set up the Funeral Payment and Funeral Poverty Reference Group to support Scottish ministers in developing policy for a new funeral payment.

Consultation on the Funeral Expense Assistance Regulations closed on 23 August 2018. An independent analysis of consultation responses received and our response had been published.

Funeral Expense Assistance (Scotland) Regulations 2019 and the Funeral Expense Assistance and Young Carer Grants (Up-rating) (Miscellaneous Amendments)(Scotland) Regulations 2020 provide the powers to deliver it. We also published a research findings visual summary on 8 May 2019. 

At that time we also published the impact assessments for regulations:

Other actions to tackle funeral poverty and helping people with funeral costs

As well as the Funeral Support Payment benefit we already took a number of other actions to make more affordable funeral options available. These include:

  • guidance on funeral costs - published in May 2019, and aimed at funeral directors, cemeteries and crematoriums, the guidance sets out steps these service providers can take to improve the availability and transparency of information on charges to help people understand, compare, and choose the services that are right for them
  • a glossary of terms that explains the most common terms used by the funeral industry
  • a leaflet to help people plan their own funeral to help people think about and record plans for their funeral. The leaflet is also available to download, so that people who would prefer to have an electronic copy of their wishes to share with relatives are able to do so
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